The Thing That Should Not Have Been: Azeroth Choppers

If you haven’t been on the Internet in the past few months, frankly, you have some catching up to do. All of those movies that you had sitting in your Netflix instant queue for the past 2 years have been removed and been replaced with movies that literally nobody wants to watch (Looking at you, various 'Hunger Games' parodies). YouTube changed its entire interface like eight times, and will probably do so again any day… oh, they just did as I’m writing this. Good. Totally necessary for them to do that. Again. I’m sure a few people that you knew on Facebook have died, and you’ve missed all of what that entails because for some reason you’ve been absent from the web. Your cousin that you’ve only met once probably got married maybe. Oh yeah, a plane went missing over the ocean about two months ago, and nobody knows where it is, except me. I know where it is. It’s in the ocean.

What else has been going on since April that you missed because you decided to not use the Internet for the past couple of months… ah, yes! Of course! Something actually important, unlike the death of a Facebook friend or the fact that you now have more people in your family thanks to the magical power of a legal marriage. You missed 'Azeroth Choppers’, Blizzard’s rendition of ‘American Chopper’! You remember, that show your uncle was always watching whenever you went over for the annual Fourth of July BBQ Get-Together-Blowout-Party-Extravaganza thing? You know, that reality TV show about building motorcycles, which lasted for 10 seasons, first on the Discovery Channel and then eventually on TLC because reasons? It was the one where the old guy with the mustache yells at his son while they both make too much money. Well, Blizzard just finished its own World of Warcraft version of the show, and let me tell you, it sure was a thing that happened and lasted eight weeks.

Let me do a bit of a rundown of the show before I start giving my completely unbiased, absolutely 100 percent correct, and profusely worthless, opinion of the show. Blizzard, the company that makes World of Warcraft, approached Paul Jr., the son of the guy from that thing, to create two choppers, each based around the overall aesthetic of the two in-game factions, Alliance and Horde, to promote the upcoming game expansion, Warlords of Draenor. At least, that’s why I think they made this show. I’m not entirely sure why they did this, actually. I’m pretty sure they don’t even mention the new expansion until the very last episode of the series, even then, offhandedly. The expansion comes out in like six months anyways.

Blizzard

Back on track. Blizzard goes to Paul Jr., and asks for two bikes. There are two teams, well actually four teams, technically. There is a Horde team and an Alliance team both consisting of higher-ups at Blizzard in Irvine, CA, then there is another Horde team and another Alliance team made up of guys that work at Paul Jr. Designs located in New York state. All of the teams had three people, except for the Paul Jr. Horde team because one of the guys died in the second episode. They kept saying “Dude left ‘cause family stuff,” and I was like, “Okay, but dude’s dead though.” Pretty sure he died. 98 percent certain. There’s no way they just made it up. It’s not like this is an internet TV show that has writers who make things happen in the show to keep it “interesting”. There’s just no way. The teams in New York are the ones that actually design and construct the bike, while the Blizzard teams are just sort of there. They don’t really do anything as far as making the bikes goes, other than tell Paul Jr. what they want, which I guess is fine because they’re the clients and that’s what clients do. Why make teams though? It could have been one guy from Blizzard that says to Paul Jr., “This should look like this because this.” Whatever. Dudes probably just wanted to be on TV on the Internet. Remember when everybody was like, “I wanna be on the TV!” but they couldn’t because it’s hard. Now everybody is like, “I wanna be on the TV on the Internet!” and they totally can and it’s the worst thing.

The members of the Paul Jr. teams seemed oddly unprofessional. You would think they would hire people that actually do their job instead of bickering like children. That’s the bit though. It’s not real. Apparently that was the “reality” factor that people tuned into on ‘American Chopper’, and it carried over into Azeroth. My favorite character on the show had to have been the guy that kept ruining everything and seemed like a genuine douche. He was the most unprofessional and it made things “funny” and “real.” I don’t remember his name, though he had a nickname that had something to do with how he always ruined everything. I think it was “Ol’ Break n’ Ruin,” or maybe it was “Wreck It Ralph.” I can’t remember even though I watched it like an hour ago.

Blizzard

Guys, I watched all eight episodes of this show in one day, and each episode is like ten minutes long. That’s 80 minutes I could have spent playing WoW. Do you understand? Guys? Guys. I could have been wasting more of my life on WoW, but instead was wasting it watching this show about WoW. Heck, I could have been outside, in real life! Nah, probably not. That’s beside the point. The point is, why did I watch this thing, why did anyone watch this thing? I don’t know anybody who watched this from week-to-week. Was anybody really interested in the show? Everyone I know that even remotely paid attention to this show at any point, only did so because of the in-game mount. The 80 minutes of Internet TV show wasn’t necessary to get people hyped for a game they already play. I only watched it so I could write this thing, and I’m not sure it was worth it because I’m not even good at this. Did Blizzard make this to bridge the gap between people who play WoW and people who watched ‘American Chopper’? Was this intended to tap into that untouched market of people who have never played WoW, but watched ‘American Chopper’, or vice versa? Do I need to keep asking more questions that don’t matter?

Blizzard, listen. You’re great. People love you, they really do. Warcraft brings people together, even if they live hundreds of miles apart, and some couldn’t have done that without you. You’ve been doing what you do best for years, and no one comes near what you have accomplished in the MMO market. Why did you make this though? I don’t see the point, honestly. Just give everybody the mounts please. What’s next, ‘Real Housewives of Dalaran’? ‘Pimp my Elekk’? ‘So You Think You Can /dance’? MTV’s ‘The Real Realm’? ‘Murloc Dynasty’? ‘Top Chef’? ‘Survivor’? ‘The Voice’?! I would actually watch all of these. These all sound way more interesting than 'Azeroth Choppers', and I’m not just saying that because I made them up. Except maybe the last three. Hire me as a creative consultant, let’s work something out, and make some neat TV shows for the Internet. You didn’t have to do this. Don’t do it again, okay? Okay. Cool. Thanks.